This is a carry over from a topic from "Can anyone surpass America in invention."
This involves Europe's power as a whole, so it involves their military capabilities as well.

Right now some points we made were:
- Europe's "worker friendly" system is simply not working. It's leading to brain drain and it's too company unfriendly and often worker unfriendly.
- Europe's going to have to make drastic changes for this decline to stop.

Basically the only way I see Europe making the change is this:
After decades of economic and social problems, Europe is met with a crisis in its front lawn and realizes they have become too weak to counter it. After trying to ignore it, it goes out of hand and the politicians become under huge pressure. They try their usual tactic of deflecting blame etc. on to the US but this time, the problems are so severe it doesn't work. Europe tries to do something about it but fails miserably and has to ask for America to fix the problem.
A most unfortunate scenario for Europe, but this isn't too far from reality. Remember that the breakup of the former Yugoslavia was supposed to be Europe's finest hour and the testing ground of post-Cold War Europe. A regional, purely European conflict wasn't dealt with properly by a seemingly strong Europe and Americans had to carry the brunt of the military operations (mostly the air strikes).
But even then, it is the civilians in the European countries that need to make their sacrifices so their country can be stronger. They have to listen to the words, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." This line applies even to the economy of the country. There's only so much the country can do for you, because they're doing it with your money.

Another issue.
- Irresponsibility on the part of European men in supporting children has lead to a severe drop in families as a whole, and a lack of children. This is a huge problem because a country fails to sustain itself. So the void is filled with immigrants and that brings about other problems... now with the whole war on terror, when this immigrant group happens to be Muslim, culture clashes will occur and the country can be embroiled in a cultural war.

Lack of internal stability hinder's a country's power.

Anyways feel free to discuss.

Isn't natality dropping in the US too?

Nope it's not. Divorces are rising in Europe and marriages dropping. Just about the opposite trend in the US.

I think in Iceland... 70% of the children are born out of wedlock. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure it's close to the actual figure.

Divorce rates of Europe

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/peo_div_rat/EUR


Divorce rates of North America


http://www.nationmaster.com/red/grap...&int=-1&id=NAM

Top 4 nations

http://www.nationmaster.com/red/grap..._div_rat&int=4


The U.S. has the highest divorce rates of any one country, nonetheless, rates overall in Europe are far exceeding that of the U.S.

Either way, we got immigrants from the Middle East and up to Pakistan to worry about, the Americans have Hispanic and Chinese immigrants to worry about.

This is just a product of our equal society (man-woman) where the women wants to have a career too and with it brings just one or two children into this world...plus high costs of having 3 or more kids are detrimental to the wish of having a big family as well.
In those countries mentioned above there is none of that and they breed like rabbits-no rubberwear, no pills...just gitty up biatch and 9 months later another hungry mouth to feed which in turn drives them towards a better paycheck which in turn leads them inevitably towards Europe or the U.S.

IMO the best (medium to long term) solution would be to advertise contraception in these countries and to invest in them so that the jobs are at hand and there's no need to go abroad...and almost forgot, putting a big emphasis on education would be most welcome too.

I know, I know contraception will be a bit hard for the horny and uneducated but factory work should do just fine...I mean after a certain period of adaptation and learning even a hunter from the African savana (sp?) should be able to weld stuff together...just an example


And generally about the state of Europe, it's going through some critical times at the moment, but when it's all sorted out (constitution, euro...) we'll be strong again...better yet we're strong right now too, but divided unfortunately.

Originally Posted by rOk

Either way, we got immigrants from the Middle East and up to Pakistan to worry about, the Americans have Hispanic and Chinese immigrants to worry about.

I kind of agree that Hispanic and Chinese imigrants may cause a problem especially with crime and all, but then again there are jobs they take than very few Americans would be willing to do. But unlike the Muslim immigrants they probably won't be threatening a future Jihad against their host country, compared to that, immigrants in America are only a so-so problem.

On immigrants and national security:

The main problem with immigrants is loyalty. If they feel more loyal to the country they left than to their new country that can be a huge security problem. However we all know this is not always the case, such as the Ethiopian community in Washington DC is made up of political exiles and the South Vietnamese are in no way fond of the North Vietnamese.

On divorce and native population sustainability (for economy, tech. and military etc):

As for divorce rates... I think that is a less of an issue than families actually creating children and also the total fertility rate. If they get married, have kids, then divorce then at *least* they still contributed to creating the next generation.
Or who knows... maybe the future of having children is in much older age, and they're going to have to preserve the eggs from the mother while she is still in her 20s and have them cryofreezed. Then when she is ready to settle down and have a child with someone, they take it out, artificially inseminate and have the egg put in the womb. If anything, just to have kids.

**related to topics we're touching but starting to digress a wee bit from our original topic **

You know what? We might be discovering how the whole gender roles were invented in the first place.

Practically every cultural norm, more and even taboo were created at one ponit for a reason. Over time, the reasons are lost and we don't know why we do them but we still do. We're undoing some and we're discovering possibly why the norm was put there in the first place. The existence of men and women both in professional worlds for example. Who knows if we'll discover something about total acceptance of homosexuality?
But some we know were created of outdated reasons... such as Muslims not eating pork or touching or eating dogs came from the fact that these animals were often full of disease during the time of Muhamed and that Western attitudes towards dogs comes from Germanic roots where dogs were essential hunting tools... so if the dog died, your food choices would be severely limited.

Heck the Muslims could be right. How ironic would that be?

Europe needs a revolution to overcome it's current problem (decline).

But "democracy" will stop this "revolution" happening, then Europe is basically a lost case.

Once upon a time, Europe was the most technologically advanced group of nations on Earth, and ran all over the planet as though they owned the whole thing. Small European nations were able to dominate regions and lands far bigger and more populous than themselves. They were the center of all new ideas and the source of almost all progress. The world was in awe of Europe then. Those times have certainly changed.

They are still more technologically advanced, on average, than most of the rest of the world, but the degree of superiority is nothing like it once was. I don't know that Europe has declined. It's more that the rest of the world did a lot of catching up. The United States, Japan and South Korea are some examples of non-European nations that have surpassed all or most of Europe in almost every category. The days of Europe dominating the whole world has drawn to a close for the most part. I see no realistic means of getting back to where they were. They will still be well above average for a very long time.